The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Penstemon plant, botanically known as Penstemon schmidel and hereinafter referred to by the name ‘Purple Riding Hood’.
The new Penstemon plant is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the Inventor in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands. The objective of the breeding program is to create new winter-hardy Penstemon plants with numerous attractive flowers and long flowering period.
The new Penstemon plant originated from a cross-pollination during the spring of 2008 of two unnamed selections of Penstemon schmidel, not patented. The new Penstemon plant was discovered and selected by the Inventor as a single flowering plant from within the progeny of the stated cross-pollination grown in a controlled environment in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands in August, 2009.
Asexual reproduction of the new Penstemon plant by vegetative cuttings in Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, since August, 2009, has shown that the unique features of this new Penstemon plant are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations.